212) describes this book as 'Une Philippique contre Dieu.' He wrote to M. Saurin:--'Ce maudit livre du Systeme de la Nature est un peche contre nature. Je vous sais bien bon gre de reprouver l'atheisme et d'aimer ce vers: "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." Je suis rarement content de mes vers, mais j'avoue que j'ai une tendresse de pere pour celui-la.' Ib. v. 418.
[131] One of Garrick's correspondents speaks of 'the sneer of one of Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Garrick Corres. i. 334. 'Ghastly smile' is borrowed from Paradise Lost, ii. 846.
[132] See ante, iii. 212. In Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 158, is given a comic poem entitled The Court of Session Garland, written by Boswell, with the help, it was said, of Maclaurin.
[133] Dr. John Gregory, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, died on Feb. 10 of this year. It was his eldest son James who met Johnson. 'This learned family has given sixteen professors to British Universities.' Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvi. 289.
[134] See ante, i. 257, note 3.
[135] See ante, i. 228.
[136] See ante, ii. 196.
[137] In the original, cursed the form that, &c. Johnson's Works, i. 21.
[138] Mistress of Edward IV. BOSWELL.
[139] Mistress of Louis XIV. BOSWELL. Voltaire, speaking of the King and Mlle. de La Valliere (not Valiere, as Lord Hailes wrote her name), says:--'Il gouta avec elle le bonheur rare d'etre aime uniquement pour lui-meme.' Siecle de Louis XIV, ch. 25. He describes her penitence in a fine passage. Ib. ch. 26.
[140] Malone, in a note on the Life of Boswell under 1749, says that 'this lady was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose memoirs were given to the public by Dr. Smollett [in Peregrine Pickle], but Anne Vane, who was mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London.' She is mentioned in a note to Horace Walpole's Letters, 1. cxxxvi.
[141] Catharine Sedley, the mistress of James II, is described by Macaulay, Hist of Eng. ed. 1874, ii. 323.
[142] Dr. A Carlyle (Auto. p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found 'Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavoring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender]. He had even erected some small cannon.' See ante, iii, 15, for a ridiculous story told of him by Goldsmith.
[143]
'Crudelis ubique Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago:' 'grim grief on every side, And fear on every side there is, and many-faced is death.'
Morris, Virgil Aeneids, ii. 368.
[144] Mr. Maclaurin's epitaph, as engraved on a marble tomb-stone, in the Grey-Friars church-yard, Edinburgh:--
Infra situs est COLIN MACLAURIN, Mathes. olim in Acad. Edin. Prof. Electus ipso Newtono suadente. H.L.P.F. Non ut nomini paterno consulat, Nam tali auxilio nil eget; Sed ut in hoc infelici campo, Ubi luctus regnant et pavor, Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium; Hujus enim scripta evolve, Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem Corpori caduco superstitem crede.
BOSWELL.
[145] See ante, i. 437, and post, p. 72.
[146]
'What is't to us, if taxes rise or fall, Thanks to our fortune we pay none at all.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours and excise our brains. Burthens like these vile earthly buildings bear, No tribute's laid on Castles in the Air'
Churchill's Poems, Night, ed. 1766, i. 89.
[147] Pitt, in 1784, laid a tax of ten shillings a year on every horse 'kept for the saddle, or to be put in carriages used solely for pleasure.'Parl. Hist. xxiv. 1028.
[148] In 1763 he published the following description of himself in his Correspondence with Erskine, ed. 1879, p.36. 'The author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright; and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of an humorist, and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old.' He is oddly enough described in Arighi's Histoire de Pascal Paoli, i. 231, 'En traversant la Mediterranee sur de freles navires pour venir s'asseoir au foyer de la nationalite Corse, des hommes graves tels que Boswel et Volney obeissaient sans doute a un sentiment bien plus eleve qu'au besoin vulgaire d'une puerile curiosite'
[149] See ante, i. 400.
[150] For respectable, see ante, iii. 241, note 2.
[151] Boswell, in the last of his Hypochondriacks, says:--'I perceive that my essays are not so lively as I expected they would be, but they are more learned.